Justin Trudeau won’t commit, but a top health adviser says Canada will need an inquiry into its pandemic response

OTTAWA-A post-pandemic review of how Canada handled the health disaster should be led by international experts and should look at both federal and provincial gaps, says a leading doctor who is working closely with the federal government on its COVID-19 response.

Dr. David Naylor, a behind-the-scenes adviser to the federal Liberal government as co-chair of the national COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, said in an interview with the Star a rigorous, independent examination of how the pandemic unfolded in Canada is necessary and should be led by international experts so that we actually get a dispassionate review."

There should be quite a few" Canadians on it, but it should be led by people of stature from outside Canada to give us a hard critical look at how we've all done," he said. And while it should pay particular attention to the federal response it must also include review of provincial and territorial responses, even if provinces want to carry out their own detailed studies, he said.

It's not an opinion likely to win props from the Trudeau government, which has punted calls for an inquiry.

But Naylor, the former dean of medicine at University of Toronto who led the federally appointed review of the 2003 SARS epidemic, said Canadians need to understand what improvements might be made for the next pandemic. That's impossible unless there is multi-jurisdictional collaboration with a review."

The Naylor-led SARS review in 2003 did just that. It looked at the federal, provincial and local response to an epidemic that hit Toronto hardest.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has deferred all questions about any inquiry or review of the pandemic response, saying there will be time for a lessons learned" exercise but it must wait until the pandemic is over.

Many observers believe there are several areas where health authorities at all levels might have acted differently, to more swiftly close borders, procure PPE, share data, recommend public use of masks or proper workplace ventilation, or better co-ordinate public health messages. A federal auditor general's report said federal authorities scrambled to address the challenge of the pandemic.

Two other internal lessons learned" reports are underway on how Health Canada handled communications and mass quarantines in the pandemic, a spokesperson said late Thursday. Given the close scrutiny of the Public Health Agency of Canada's activities through the Office of the Auditor General audits and various parliamentary committees, no other lessons learned exercises were needed," said Eric Morissette.

Yet Naylor believes the machinery is all going to have to be rethought when the pandemic recedes. We'll learn from things that did go well and didn't go well."

He added, A lot of it is hard to fix on the fly, especially since we are in the third period now."

His comments come as provinces west of the Atlantic region struggle to control variant-driven outbreaks. And the public is confused about a vaccine rollout marked by advice from myriad experts.

Last week an independent federal vaccine advisory panel, NACI, recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine only be offered to those over 30 who can't wait for a preferred" mRNA vaccine. Naylor said this has been another reminder in some of these areas we probably need to co-ordinate the communication. We need better clarity, we need more consistency and not necessarily in message but of messengers."

When the time does come to create an inquiry, part of any review has to be a re-examination of how we govern ourselves in a pandemic," Naylor said, pointing to the federal Emergencies Act that provides for the declaration of a public welfare emergency which includes pandemics and requires provincial consultation before it is invoked."

Trudeau rejected calls to use the act, which would grant Ottawa special temporary powers in areas normally considered provincial jurisdiction. But his government did consider using it last spring because it wanted to keep all options open, deputy privy council clerk Christyne Tremblay told a parliamentary committee this week. She said Trudeau consulted the provinces as required by the act.

Back then, premiers unanimously opposed any talk of Ottawa invoking emergency powers. After that, Trudeau repeatedly rejected it as an option, saying provinces have lots of tools at their disposal and I'm not looking to bring in a federal hammer to try and do things - when we've seen provinces be very effective at doing them themselves."

Naylor said the legislation in itself doesn't solve the problems that have arisen." In fact, the notion the Emergencies Act should be used is predicated on a wrong-headed assumption that, in a pandemic where front-line public health and health care inevitably intersect, the federal government is somehow best positioned to respond," he said.

What might have been better was a decision-making table like the national cabinet that Australia created in May 2020 to co-ordinate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across levels of government, he said.

The national cabinet set up shared authority and responsibility for Australia's pandemic response among the federal prime minister and state and territory leaders. A structure like that tends to blunt posturing and partisanship at all levels because the decision-making table has jurisdictional leaders from different political parties."

Until recently, provinces and the Trudeau government for the most part collaborated. The federal government flexed its borrowing and spending muscle to provide 80 per cent of all public spending on economic and health supports in the pandemic.

That unified front has cracked over provincial demands for more permanent health spending, and lately over border controls - domestic and international.

The Trudeau government used the Quarantine Act to enact certain measures at international borders. But Trudeau turned aside calls by Ontario's Doug Ford and B.C.'s John Horgan to get tough on interprovincial travel, saying provinces can put in stronger controls without federal permission or intervention, just as the Atlantic Provinces and northern territories did.

Now the Ford government is ramping up its call for tougher action at international borders too.

Ford fumed Thursday over Ottawa's inaction, saying variants brought in by travellers are the dominant strain of coronavirus in the province's outbreaks, as he extended stay-at-home orders.

Ford said he has made four requests of Trudeau to crack down on travellers who bypass mandatory quarantine orders at airports by zipping across the land border by car or limo, or taking private jets, but Trudeau has failed to act.

We're just hearing crickets," said Ford. It isn't up to one province to determine national border restrictions. The federal government needs to step up and do what's right and what's necessary. Simply put, it's their job and they need to do it."

We will always have regional differences in a pandemic," said Naylor. But I think Canada is unusual in how sharp the differences have been across regions in how the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. That's due not only to our constitutional division of powers, but also a pattern of jurisdictional jockeying in our fractious federation," he said.

Donald Savoie, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the University of Moncton, said Trudeau's reluctance to take a more aggressive national posture or to invoke emergency powers has less to do with any love for co-operative federalism" and more to do with the political calendar for the minority government.

I think the real reason the federal government hasn't moved in with a heavy hand or even a soft hand is that this is the silly season" - ahead of what Savoie says is a likely fall election. It's all about politics and nothing else."

He said any action Trudeau might take under the guise of acting in the national interest to help out one region risks angering another - a chance Trudeau won't take.

Let me put it a bit differently. If there was a political advantage to Trudeau to have a national perspective come into play, he would embrace it; if there's no political advantage ... why would he embrace it? There is an election in September ... the world knows it. Why play it fast and loose with something that could backfire?"

Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @tondamacc